Laura Marlin Mysteries 2: Kidnap in the Caribbean (24 page)

‘Jimmy was very brave,’ Rita said.

‘Brave as a lion,’ Bob added proudly. ‘That Mr McGee never had a chance against our Jimmy.’

A huge grin spread over Jimmy’s face. In that minute he felt his whole destiny shift. Never again would he be Jimmy Gannet, the prey of school bullies, the shy, clumsy mouse. He’d faced down sharks and gangsters. He was capable of anything.

‘Actually,’ Jimmy told the reporter, ‘it was sort of an accident. When I saw Mr McGee about to throw my mum and dad to the sharks, I ran to try to stop him. I was very scared because this one shark kept opening its mouth and it had thousands of teeth.’

‘I’m not ashamed to admit I was screaming,’ Rita put in. ‘There was a lot to scream about.’

‘Go wan, boy. You say it were sorta an accident?’ asked a reporter with dreadlocks.

‘Yes,’ said Jimmy. ‘You see, as I ran up to Mr McGee, I tripped over a harpoon gun that was lying on the ground. The harpoon went straight into Mr McGee’s leg. He made this strangled noise and fell into the pool with the sharks.’

‘It was no more than he deserved,’ Rita interrupted, ‘and if it was up to me, I’d have left him there. But Jimmy has a heart of gold. He rushed over to this electrical panel and was pushing every other button, trying to find a way to either empty the tank or let the sharks out or something. Bob and I were tied and could do nothing to help. Then the door burst open and this man who looked like a hero from a romantic novel …’

‘She was hallucinating by that time,’ Bob interjected, suddenly remembering that they weren’t supposed to mention the tall, dark stranger who’d untied them and dealt with the police with such authority. ‘Apparently that’s what happens when you get overwhelmed with terror.’

The Globe woman said: ‘Some reports are saying that there were other children at Marine Concern that day – a boy and a girl.’

Watching TV, Laura almost choked on her veggie burger. ‘How did that get out?’

‘There are always leaks,’ her uncle told her. ‘Don’t worry. Your names won’t be mentioned. I’ve made sure of it.’

Bob and Rita looked at one another. ‘No, there was only our Jimmy.’

‘What do you say to the people who say you’re a hero, Jimmy?’ the reporter persisted.

Jimmy said, ‘I’m no hero. I just did what anyone would have done. I did meet two real heroes once. They saved my life and afterwards they wouldn’t even let me thank them for it. They said it was nothing. One of them, the girl, she’s going to be a detective when she grows up. She’s going to be as good as that detective in the books, Matt Walker. Better probably. You never know, maybe I could be her sergeant or something.’

He grinned. ‘Or she could be mine.’

Laura turned off the television. She had a smile on her face, but she was deeply moved. She’d never have believed it a week ago, but she couldn’t wait to have dinner with the Gannets that evening. Jimmy, Rita and Bob were coming over to the villa and they were going to have a vegetarian barbecue on the beach. They all agreed that they’d seen quite enough fish for one week.

Laura was particularly looking forward to seeing Jimmy. She’d found a Matt Walker novel in a local bookshop and she wanted to give it to him to inspire him to carry on dreaming and believing that he could do anything. Not, she thought, that he needed a novel. He’d managed very well on his own.

On the phone, however, as in the press conference, he’d insisted on giving his friends all the credit. ‘I learned a lot from watching you and Tariq on the ship,’ he told her. ‘Firstly, you stand up for yourselves, even against adults, if you think you’re right. When the ship’s crew and half the passengers were refusing to believe that your uncle had been kidnapped and calling you stowaways, you stood your ground. It was like watching the lions versus the gladiators. I would have run away crying. But you were firm and you held onto the truth and didn’t allow yourselves to be bullied.

‘There were a couple of other things too. I saw how calm you both were when you saved me at the climbing wall. Other kids – kids like me – would have been boasting and full of themselves, but you and Tariq just carried on without a fuss as if you rescued people every day.

‘What helped me most, though, was when you told me about how criminals worry so much about the details that they forget about the obvious stuff. That’s what I was thinking about when I saw the laundry chute. They had all this fancy alarm equipment and steel doors and combination locks, but they’d forgotten about the ordinary everyday thing staring them in the face.

‘So, thank you,’ Jimmy had added.

‘For what?’

‘For teaching me, for saving me, for being a friend to me and for making this the most exciting holiday of my life.’

‘You’re very welcome. Thank
you
, Jimmy.’

‘For what?’

‘For all the same things,’ Laura told him. ‘We wouldn’t have survived the most exciting holiday of our lives if it hadn’t been for you. Hey, Jim …’

‘Yeah?’

‘Remember what I told you. If you can face down the Straight A gang, the bullies at your school will be nothing.’

‘That’s right,’ said Jimmy, and she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘They’ll be nothing.’

Out on the verandah, Laura allowed herself to revel once more in the dazzling array of blues. This time in a week, they’d be in mid-air, on their way back to St Ives. If the weather forecast was to be believed, it would be raining when they got there but Laura didn’t mind in the least.

Paradise is all very well, but there’s no place like home.

Jaws
has given sharks a fearsome reputation as man-eaters, yet in the past five years no more than four people have died each year from shark attacks. Sharks cause fewer deaths than lightning, dogs or falling coconuts. Compare that to our treatment of sharks. We slaughter 70–100 million a year, mostly for shark’s fin soup, one of the world’s most expensive delicacies. Boat crews often slice off the fins of living sharks and toss them overboard to die a slow, painful death. Up to 10 million kilos of shark fins are exported every year to Hong Kong, a trade hub, which then sends them onto China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan. In the UK, shark meat is sometimes sold as ‘rock salmon’ in fish and chip ships.

In July 2010, Hawaii made it illegal to possess, sell or distribute shark fins, but it might be too little, too late. Scientists fear that threatened shark species like the Porbeagle, Dogfish, Oceanic Whitetip and Scalloped Hammerhead will be one step closer to extinction by the time CITES (Commission for the International Trade in Endangered Species) meets again in 2013.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
: Don’t ever order shark’s fin soup at a Chinese restaurant or ‘rock salmon’ in a fish and chip shop. Ask your family and friends to consider joining you in boycotting shark products.

Atlantic bluefin tuna is among the most critically endangered species on earth. Between 1970 and 2007 the Atlantic bluefin tuna population declined by an estimated 82.4 per cent in the Western Atlantic alone. The tuna is a slow-growing fish that can take up to twelve years to reach maturity and only spawns every two or three years, making them particularly vulnerable to extinction. Yet when did you last see a sandwich shop that didn’t sell tuna sandwiches? The black market in tuna alone is believed to be worth over $7 billion a year. Over 80 per cent of captured bluefin tuna ends up in Japan, where it is mostly eaten raw as sushi. In 2010 a single tuna weighing 512lb was sold for $178,000 at Tokyo’s Tsukii fish market.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
: Stop eating tuna and consider asking your parents and friends to do the same. Ask your school or local sandwich shop to stop serving tuna fish.

A few years ago a BBC survey showed that swimming with dolphins is the activity most people want to do before they die. Across the world, dolphins are suffering horribly to make this dream come true. In places like Japan and the Solomon Islands, wild dolphins are captured and sent off to marine parks across the world. Many of these dolphins die on the way, and the ones who don’t are often kept in swimming pools where chlorinated water burns their eyes and skin. Think about how red your eyes are after you’ve been in the swimming pool. Now imagine chlorine burning your eyes and blistering your skin twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for ten or twenty years. That’s what some dolphins experience. In the ocean, dolphins swim up to 50km a day and live in big, social groups that spend hours every day hunting. In captivity, they are confined, bored, abused, made to perform ridiculous tricks, and fed dead fish, all so someone can say they swam with a dolphin.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
: Refuse to visit any facility that keeps captive dolphins. If your dream is to swim with dolphins, wait until you have the chance of swimming with them in the wild, in situations where the welfare of the dolphins is paramount. Better still, content yourself with observing them from boats on tours that respect the dolphins’ space and freedom.